The Gabrielsen Seven: 4th of July and Grace's 8th birthday

Fun at the elementary school playground.

Grace as a fireman super hero, complete with gas mask!

Charlie the pirate.

Princess and know-it-all.

Lounge lizards.

Brotherly love.

What a happy kid:)

Ballerina and movie star. Alice purposely didn't smile because movie stars are too cool for that.

Best buds.

Bleached leggings after cleaning the bathrooms.

In Charlie's diaper.

Grace too.

On Friday, Paul had work off! We let ourselves get up a little but slowly, ate breakfast, and went to this playground we'd never tried before. It was awesome!

Even Danny loved it!

Everyone had lots of fun until it got crowded and hot, then we drove around looking at boats on the water. We got home in time for lunch.

We ate a picnic on the deck! Then naps for the adults and babies, and pizza while watching the old Lion/Witch/Wardrobe cartoon. Paul and I had a date that night planning our overnight anniversary date in Utah.

On Saturday, we celebrated Grace's 8th birthday. She requested chocolate chip pancakes and mandarin oranges for breakfast.

The kids all got watches for her birthday.

Then to the 4th of July parade. It's supposedly the biggest one in Northern VA.

Danny liked his first parade.

We loved the Bolivian dancers.

Paul was totally in the spirit, yelling out a lot and embarrassing Grace and Alice:)

Stormin' Norman giving me a high five!

Charlie and the Famous Dave's pig.

It was about a 2-hour parade, but lots of fun, and tons of candy!

We ended up with 11 pounds! Nobody got any until after our lunch of Grace's favorite things: tuna fish croissants, white cheddar popcorn, and blueberries.

Once the boys were down for their naps, the girls frosted cupcakes with me, then Paul did science experiments with them.

The rodents around here are way too comfortable with humans. This squirrel was lounging on our deck. We also have some large mice or shrews or something that like to run back and forth on our patio. Paul set traps, and they ate the peanut butter and set off the traps, but didn't get caught...yet.

Grace requested that Paul read a chapter book to us when we were starting to get tired in the afternoon. It was really fun!

Then Grace did face painting.

Dinner was Grace's favorite, sweet and sour chicken.

Then chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chips in them, chocolate frosting, and oreos crushed on top.

She got some great gifts, including this cool art set from Grandma Lu.

She was so surprised with her brand new quad! She deserves it after how good she's been reading the Book of Mormon every day.

We also got her the electronic 20 questions game. It should be good for our road trip this summer.

Then the kids put on a parade for us! We had baths, then set up the projector for Care Bears in Wonderland. Fun! Then we surprised the kids by letting them stay up late for fireworks, which we haven't done in years.

We left the house at 8:30 pm, had a miserable time finding parking in huge crowds, but finally did by 9 or so. Then we sat out on the sidewalk and listened to the baseball game on Paul's phone, since we would be watching the stadium fireworks after the game. The girls liked watching the fireflies and seeing Jupiter and Venus, but they got tired as Charlie got hyper. The game went on and on as the fog got thicker and thicker. Finally, in the THIRTEENTH inning, they stopped the game for the thick, thick fog and decided to wait for the fog to lift before finishing the game! We couldn't even see the huge stadium lights anymore. It was 10:30, so we headed home with some crying kids. We heard that they later did decide just to finish the game the next day, and they lit the fireworks, but people were calling them "fogworks", and you couldn't even see them. Kind of disappointing.